I’m all in favour of cycleways – they are a great addition to the city, and may even allow me one day to ride a bike in Wellington again. It is a process that is long overdue, although many car-driving persons are up in arms, as this delivery of cycleways is also going hand in hand with the abolition of some on-road car parks. Bound to…
Right now Wellington is undergoing hearings on what may be the most important discussions on the future – the Hearings on the proposed new District Plan. There have been a number of these Hearings, which have looked at General District Plan matters, Suburban matters, Heritage aspects, and in the current hearing, the City Centres. The outcome from these Hearings will affect the city looks, works and…
A timely and interesting post from the WCC, showing a list of relevant accommodation providers, that may or may not have issues similar to the Loafer’s Lodge, which, as we all know, tragically burnt down and killed people. No one wants a repeat of that sordid mess, and so the great thing is that the WCC are being pro-active and trying to get ahead of the…
There’s a depressing familiarity with the news of the destruction by fire of the sawtooth roofed buildings at Shelly Bay. It is the classic “accident” that so often happens to heritage buildings – the building is carefully preserved for years, the building gradually deteriorates, and just when something was going to be done, the building mysteriously burns down. Except in this case, perhaps not quite so…
No more Queen’s Birthday honours, but instead we have the King’s Birthday honour’s list, which seems almost more anachronistic. It starts off both thoroughly well-deserved, with Jacinda Adern getting a top gong (Dame Grand Companion to the New Zealand Order of Merit) for her having to put up with all the shit that the world threw at her in just four or five years, including Earthquake,…
When is a MDRS not a MDRS? When Christopher Luxon agrees to it, and then disagrees to it, it seems. What am I talking about, I hear you say? Well, the MDRS (medium density residential standards), universally agreed to last year by both Labour AND National (AND the Greens and ACT too I think?) – that one, that only just came into being a short while…
Budget has just been announced, and I’ve still to go through it, but a couple of things sprung out to me. Public Housing – $3 billion “Robertson said the Government would build 3000 new state homes by June 2025. The new public houses were expected to cost $3.1 billion in capital investment, on top of $465 million operational costs.” By my basic arithmetic, that means the…
It is a pretty sad day to be writing – and we all know what about. Just over 36 hours ago, a building in Newtown caught fire and burnt out, killing at least 6 people, with 11 other people still not accounted for – so possibly up to 17 people dead. It is so sad because these lives were lost needlessly, tragically, and without any justification…
It’s uncomfortable to say this, but sometimes architects talk a load of old bollocks. I think we have all been subject to that at one stage or more in our lives – in my case it was from the hands (or mouths) of the learned architects who taught me how to be an architect, all those many years ago. Too many to count, or make public,…
Great news this week that at long last the venerable St Gerard’s monastery has been sold. Long seen as one of the true icons of Wellington architecture and the focus of many tourist snaps, St Gerard’s church was started first way back in 1908 by the catholic Redemptorists (Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer) to a design by John Swan and then added to in 1932…